


The New Guy In Town

by bookwormforalways



Series: what the future holds [5]
Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, Teacher Bellamy, The 100 - Freeform, stalker clarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 20:56:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4801952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwormforalways/pseuds/bookwormforalways
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke notices the new guy in town and wants to get to know this attractive newcomer. Miscommunication and misinformation lead to hilarity for everyone except Clarke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New Guy In Town

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired *slightly* by Hairspray's "New Girl In Town", especially the line "hey, look, (s)he's wearing [a] ring"
> 
>  
> 
> Also. The pink school does exist. I walked those halls for four years.

“Raven, he’s here again!” Clarke whispered into her phone as she peered down the pasta aisle at the grocery store. “Rae, I see him everywhere now - at the grocery store, at the bank, walking on the street… I don’t know who he is, but he’s hot.” For the past month Clarke had noticed a ridiculously attractive man show up at her frequent stops in town. And for some reason Clarke had developed a crush on the man she had never talked to, an unhealthy recognition that had turned into a slight obsession as she began to run her errands more frequently and at differing times in order to increase her chances of spotting him, hoping for the possibility of something to happen. 

Clarke’s best friend and roommate sighed into the phone. “Clarke, if you think he’s hot, go up to him and say hi. Otherwise he’s going to start thinking you’re some creepy stalker chick who has it out for him.”

She blushed at Raven’s words. “I am not some creepy stalker chick. For the record, I went to this grocery store first and he was the one who just showed up.” Clarke added a few items to her cart and swung around to the next aisle, and caught a glimpse of the attractive man leaving the aisle at the far end. 

“Yeah, but you’re the one who’s following him through the grocery store as we speak.”

“I am not!” Clarke retorted. “I simply happen to be shopping at the same time, purely coincidental.”

“Ha, because going grocery shopping four times in one week is purely coincidental - Clarke, talk to him or come home, but don’t buy more food, we have more than enough, even with Wick, Monty, and Jasper here.”

“Fine. I won’t buy a lot, I’ll just browse the sales…” 

Clarke turned her cart into the next aisle, following her zigzag pattern through the store, only to find that the man with the dark hair and the chiselled cheekbones was still in the aisle. Hoping to look busy she turned to the cereal selection, finding that the one item her apartment actually needed was the brand of cereal that was on sale - and on the top shelf. 

She reached up to grab a box, but found her fingers falling short, despite stretching and standing on her tiptoes. She groaned in frustration. She was typically average in height, but apparently grocery store employees found some sort of inner joy in stocking sale items on the freakishly high shelves where — and her inner monologue of a rant was interrupted when a long, muscled and tan arm reached above her and grabbed the box, and handed it to her. 

It was the ridiculously attractive man. The one she had been not stalking, but noticing over the past few weeks. And now he was standing in front of her, making direct eye contact. 

“Is this what you wanted?” He asked, his dark eyes soft and gentle. 

Clarke nodded, trying not to blush as she took the box. “Yeah, thanks.” 

The man reached up to grab a second box, “Did you need more than one?” Clarke shook her head and he held onto the box. “Well, it’s my favourite, so I might as well stock up.”

He took a step backward to resume his shopping, when he glanced back to Clarke. “I feel like I’ve seen you around town before, I’m new in town, so I don’t recognize many faces, but have I seen you around here before?”

Uh-oh. He had noticed her stalkerish habits. “Uhh, yeah, I think I’ve seen you too. I’m Clarke.” 

He held out his hand and they shook. “I’m Bellamy,” he introduced. 

Clarke had placed the box in cart and began to push it towards Bellamy’s cart, and he walked with her, and the conversation continued. 

“So you’re new to Ark, how are you liking it so far?”

“Well, not really new to Ark. My grandmother used to live here and I used to visited her every summer when I was growing up. So I mostly knew my way around town before I moved here, but I still don’t know many people here.”

They turned into the last aisle of the store as Bellamy added different items to his cart as they talked. 

“So new, but not so new to Ark…” Clarke mused out loud. “How come you moved to Ark now?”

“I got a job here. I’m teaching history at Arkwell High.”

“Ahh, my old stomping grounds. Tell me, are the halls as obnoxiously pink as I remember?” Clarke cringed at the memory of burgundy and salmon coloured tiles on the floor, with red brick on some walls and a light rose colour on others. Despite the differing colours, the halls just blurred into a large mass of pink - the joys of eighties decorating talents. 

He laughed. “Yeah, why is it so pink? I was wondering?”

“Apparently a sale at the paint store and a cheap school board in the eighties equals pink walls.” 

They had reached the end of the aisle and had turned toward the checkouts. Bellamy waved Clarke to go ahead - her cart was substantially less empty, mostly full of non-perishables that would survive a lengthy stay in the pantry. 

After Clarke had finished paying and bagging her items she turned to Bellamy, who was unloading items onto the counter, “Well, I have to run, but I’ll see you around town.”

He looked up and smiled, “It was great meeting you Clarke, see you around.” 

Clarke left the grocery store grinning, and couldn’t wait to tell Raven that she had actually talked to the mysteriously attractive man that she had not been stalking. And to show off how little she had bought in her fourth grocery trip of the week. 

 

—————————

The following week passed by quickly, Clarke spending most of her time busy with work. She ran an art gallery in town and was in the middle of setting up a new show for a local artist, Lincoln Woods, whose artwork had many critics getting excited. 

But her busyness meant that she didn’t have time for extra stops at the coffee shop, or to the grocery store, or even the bank. In fact, she had only seen Bellamy once that week, as he was heading to the coffee shop and she ran by late for a meeting at work. They had waved and said a quick hello but nothing more. 

It caused Clarke to miss the days where she had the time to extend her errands and trips into town. 

But this week had been far too busy. And stressful. Not to mention everything that could go wrong had gone wrong today - a number of Lincoln’s pieces had been lost en route from his studio to the gallery, which had elicited anger from her superiors and from the artist himself. And when the pieces had been found, they had been damaged - though they were repairable, Lincoln was still upset. As well, they had received their show promotion flyers and posters from the printing shop only to find that they had been printed with the wrong date. 

And apparently everything else that went wrong in the office that day was also Clarke’s fault. 

She had kept Raven updated of each crisis as it arose and her roommate had deemed that Clarke deserved a night of drinking away her troubles. 

So here Clarke was, on her way to the bar to meet Raven when her phone rang. Raven. 

“Rae, I’m almost there!”

“Clarke, I’m not there. And I don’t think I can make it tonight.”

“What!? Why not?” 

“Well my non-genius boyfriend decided to try welding together one of his inventions, and the torch slipped, and we’re at the ER now. He burnt his leg pretty badly, but he’ll survive…”

“Oh no! Poor guy!” Clarke sympathized. 

“It was his own damn fault - he’s the engineer, not the mechanic, he should have asked me for help!”

Clarke could tell Raven was heating up, blaming herself for Wick’s accident. “Is there anything I can do? I’ll can come by the ER now —“

“I’ll be fine, thanks though. The doc just told me I can go see Wick, so I’ll check in with you later. Have a drink for me.”

And Raven hung up, leaving Clarke feeling even more helpless and alone. But hell, she did deserve that drink, and the one she’d have for Raven. So she took a few steps forward toward the bar and walked inside. 

Trying to shield herself from the embarrassment of drinking alone, Clarke beelined to the bar and pulled herself onto one of the tall bar stools. The bartender placed a drink in front of her only a few seconds after her order - one of the only things that had gone right for her today. 

Clarke was halfway through the first glass, staring at the bottles behind the bar when she felt someone tap her shoulder.

“Hey Clarke, is this seat taken?” It was Bellamy, and he was gesturing to the seat next to her. 

“It’s all yours,” Clarke told him, glad that after her crummy day things were starting to brighten up. If her best friend couldn’t be there to cheer her up, the hot new guy in town (who she was most definitely not stalking) was a decent substitute. 

“How’s it going?” Bellamy asked, after he had ordered and received his drink, “I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t seen you around.”

Clarke nodded, “I’ve been crazy busy too.” She had planned to stop talking here, but Bellamy’s easy silence dragged more words out of her, leading to confessing her days’ difficulties. “Work this week was just never-ending, and nothing seemed to go right, and I got blamed for everything that went wrong. And my best friend was supposed to meet me for drinks tonight, but she just cancelled on me because her boyfriend ended up in the ER.” Clarke picked up her glass and drained it, and the empty sound of the glass returning to the bar garnered the bartenders attention, and he diligently filled her cup. 

“Is he okay?” Bellamy asked.

“Yes! At least, I think so. But c’mon, what kind of engineer doesn’t know how to weld?” Her frustration with her week combined with the alcohol in her system had led her to a loud and giddy-but-cranky mood that apparently Bellamy found amusing. And if she had thought his deep voice was sexy, well, the chuckled laughter was ten times better. 

“Stop laughing at me - tell me about your busy week, hopefully there’s at least one embarrassing story that will make me feel better about myself.” Clarke looked up at him, a pleading look in her eyes. 

He obliged, and began fiddling with his glass as he talked about his week. 

But Clarke’s attention was drawn to his fingers. To the one finger on his left hand that sported a thin gold band. 

“Well I don’t know about embarrassing stories…”

A WEDDING RING!!?! A freakin’ wedding ring. Bellamy was married. 

“But there’s this one girl in my history class who is, well, let’s just say hopeless when it comes to common sense…”

Bellamy. Ring. Married. 

“So today in class we were talking about different American presidents…”

How had Clarke not noticed this before. She mentally kicked herself for not noticing it at the grocery store, because she had had a full conversation with him and hadn’t noticed the gold band. 

“And the poor dear raised her hand to ask what Obama’s last name was…” 

But wait - had Bellamy mentioned a wife when he had been telling her about his move here? She couldn’t remember specifically, though she could recall that he had mentioned not knowing many people and feeling lonely in town… surely he wouldn’t be lonely if he had a wife here?

“Well of course the whole class starting laughing at her and she couldn’t understand why. But the best part…”

Hmm, maybe she could try to steer the conversation into a direction that could answer her questions.

“The best part, and I feel awful for enjoying this so much,” Bellamy grinned, “is that the girl’s best friend stood up and tried to defend the girl for asking such a good question, and that the other kids shouldn’t laugh just because they don’t know Obama’s last name either. Then one of the jocks asked the friend what Obama’s last name was and the friend didn’t know either.” 

Clarke laughed with him as he continued his story. 

“I don’t know whether to be incredibly concerned for the lack of general knowledge that teenager’s have today or to start a blog that catalogues everything for my personal enjoyment.” 

“The blog. Definitely the blog,” she affirmed.

“Cool, now there’s one person I can count on to read about the daily struggles of Mr. Blake trying to teach ignorant teens common sense. The tag line will be ‘common sense - it’s not as common as you’d think.’” 

Clarke was just about to ask why she was the only person who would read it - surely he would have some friends back home who would enjoy it, (or his wife?) when a leggy brunette appeared on Bellamy’s other side. The woman kissed Bellamy on the cheek and settled into the chair beside Bellamy and ordered a drink. 

To Clarke’s dismay, Bellamy was grinning at the gorgeous woman, and teasing her about being so late. And Clarke could not help but notice the large diamond ring on the woman’s left hand. 

Bellamy turned back to Clarke and introduced the woman. “Clarke, this is Octavia. O, this is Clarke.”

Clarke offered a “Nice to meet you” and Octavia gave a winning smile to Clarke before turning to Bellamy and asking, “So this is the blonde who’s been following you around town?”

Shit. Shitshitshit. Clarke did not want to get pulled into the middle of the couples marital spat, especially if she was the cause of the husband’s wandering eye. 

Bellamy was blushing. It was time to abort. Clarke quickly downed the last of her second drink and slapped down some money to pay her tab. 

Clarke interrupted Bellamy’s weak explanation of how they always seemed to be in the same place at the same time because it was a small town, with her excuse of an emergency text from Raven who needed Clarke back home to help take care of Wick. 

Bellamy looked up at her with his deep brown eyes, and Clarke was sorry to have to leave, but she was not a home-wrecker. 

Clarke waved goodbye to the Blakes and made her way through the tables and out the door. 

Outside it had started to snow. Great. Her work week had sucked, Raven had cancelled, the hot guy she had a crush on was actually married to an incredibly gorgeous girl, and now snow. Ew. 

Clarke pulled her coat tighter around her began to walk back towards her apartment when she heard her name being called behind her. 

She turned around to find Bellamy pacing down the sidewalk toward her. 

“Clarke, hey, you don’t have to leave just because Octavia came.” The snowflakes were getting caught in Bellamy’s dark hair, which made him even more attractive - if that was even possible. 

“It wasn’t that, I have to go help Raven.” 

With his hands in his jean pockets, he shrugged his shoulders. “If that’s what you want me to believe, then so be it. But I know you didn’t get a text. So you should come back inside, because Octavia really wants to get to know you too.”

Crap. She’d been caught. She ran a hand through her hair, now damp from the melting snowflakes. “Umm, well, I didn’t want to get you in trouble with your wife, it looked like things weren’t going well…” She stopped when she registered the look of pure shock on Bellamy’s face. 

“My.. my who?” 

“Umm… your wife? Octavia?” Clarke pointed to him and held up her left hand and wiggled her empty ring finger. 

Bellamy looked down at his own hands and froze. And then bent over in gasping laughter, shaking as he took deep breaths. 

“Oh my god. I’m so so so sorry Clarke.” 

“What? What’s going on?” She was confused, totally and utterly confused. 

“Ummm, wow, I can see how you thought what you thought.” Bellamy reached up and scratched the back of his head. And yes, it was possible for him to get more attractive as a small sliver of skin was suddenly visible along his waistline. “Clarke. I’m not married. Octavia is my younger sister.” 

Her jaw dropped in shock. “But, but the ring?” 

“Okay, so I won’t blame you if you don’t believe this, but just hear me out. So people have definitely thought that O and I were dating in the past because we’re pretty close and we don’t really look alike because we have different fathers. And one time someone thought we were married because we had the same last name. But this is the first time a ring has ever been involved and that’s why I burst out laughing.” 

Clarke nodded, following his story. 

He continued. “So you know I’m a teacher at Arkwell High? Well so is Octavia - she teaches art and drama and is in charge of the school play this year. And we were in the costume room after school today digging around for some stuff she needed when we found the jewellery case. In the spirit of authenticity, she wants the male lead to wear a wedding ring and when we found one in the case she told me to put in on so that we wouldn’t lose it in the pile of other costumes we were taking. And then I totally forgot about it while I was marking at home, and didn’t think twice about it when I showed up here, and didn’t notice it until you pointed it out just now. Sooo… yeah.”

And it was Clarke’s turn to laugh. “So you’re telling me that I thought you were married, but really you were just helping your sister find costume jewellery for a school play?” 

“Yep. And also, it’s kind of cold, and I’m not a huge fan of snow, so if you wanted to come back inside with me, I’m sure Octavia would love to hear this story.” 

Clarke hesitated, wondering for a moment if she should be more cautious of Bellamy’s tales - he could be lying after all. But she decided to trust him, he looked earnest enough. And besides, if he wasn’t telling the truth, the last place he would be bringing her was back to Octavia, right? 

So she nodded and they walked back to the bar. 

“So Octavia’s ring…?” Clarke asked. 

“She just got engaged to a local artist - one of the reasons why we ended up moving down here. Actually, you may know him if you’re in the art scene - Lincoln Woods?” 

“Shut up! I’m working on his show right now!” 

“Oh, so you’re the one who lost his work and ruined it? You might not want to tell O that because she threatened to beat you up for Lincoln…” 

“It wasn’t my fault! And I already told you I had the worst week of life because of that, please don’t let your sister beat me up!” 

Bellamy grinned at her and threw an arm around her shoulders, “Don’t worry, I won’t let her mess with you.” 

 

——————————————— 

 

Three years later Clarke and Bellamy found themselves at that very same bar for a date night. Clarke had left Bellamy at the bar while she had used the restroom, and returned to find a gorgeous redhead sitting in her seat beside Bellamy, leaning towards him in conversation. 

Intrigued, Clarke walked up to hear their conversation. Bellamy had spotted her coming and held out his hand, pulling her close to his side. He quickly kissed her cheek and said, “Clarke, honey, this is Roma. Roma, this is Clarke. My wife.”

Clarke watched with slight glee as Roma’s eyes flared in surprise and darted down to Bellamy’s hand only to find that there was indeed a shiny gold band on his left hand. 

The redhead stood, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” She left quickly and headed back to the far corner of the bar where her friends were clearly sitting and staring, as they had been watching the interaction. 

Clarke returned to the stool that was recently emptied, not letting go of her husband’s hand as their fingers intertwined on the counter. 

“So umm, that was something. Poor girl,” she said. 

Bellamy laughed. “What can I say, the ladies like me.” Clarke punched him in the shoulder. “But maybe I should get a big glowing neon sign to go with this ring that says I’m taken?” 

Clarke grinned, “Or you could try to let them down a bit easier? It’s almost painful to watch.” 

“But it’s so much more fun to shock them with the big reveal. And plus, I love showing you off as my wife.” Bellamy leaned over and kissed her. He reached out for her hand and ran his thumb over her diamond ring. 

“And besides, no other woman is going to believe the line that I’m only wearing a ring because I was helping my sister find costume jewellery for a play…” he teased. 

“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?” She asked, her cheeks flushing red as she recalled that embarrassing night three years ago. 

“Nope. Never.”


End file.
